The U.S. economy is “slowly becoming more depressed” and spending being pursued by politicians in Washington will just “create more poverty,” says Nobel Prize-winning economist Edward C. Prescott.

Indeed, many economists believe that government spending is the root of the nation’s economic ills, in sharp contrast to the advocates for the welfare state and government economic control who bemoan the automatic cuts under the sequester. They say the spending cuts of $85 billion per year under the sequester program, being reviled by those in favor of an expanding welfare state, are “piddling.”

The latest budget plans from both Democrats and Republicans have U.S. spending continuing to rise, although the GOP plan has it rising significantly more slowly.

Prescott, the 2004 Nobel laureate in economics, told WND: “To spend more will only be to create more poverty. This is an established scientific fact.”